The UK system is not in fact mandatory though. That is the difference, ISP's may or may not participate, and even then it is possible for user to opt out of the filtering system.
French net filtering plan moves forward
Peter Sayer
17 February, 2010 22:09
French lawmakers voted Tuesday to approve a draft law to filter Internet traffic, a measure the government says is intended to catch child pornographers. The bill will now go on for a second and final reading.
Critics of the catch-all "Bill on direction and planning for the performance of domestic security" say that filtering won't stop the spread of child pornography -- but could allow the government to censor other materials.
The bill, known as Loppsi II in French, was approved by 312 votes to 214 in a vote in the National Assembly on Tuesday. The government has a large majority in the Assembly; two of its deputies abstained, with the others all voting in favor of the bill.
...
The bill is a mishmash of unrelated measures, boosting the amount the police spend on "security," multiplying penalties for counterfeiting checks or credit cards, increasing use of CCTV cameras, extending access to the police national DNA database and authorizing the seizure of vehicles driven without a license.
Among the measures dealing with the Internet, it seeks to criminalize online identity theft, allow police to tap Internet connections as well as phone lines during investigations, and target child pornography by ordering ISPs to filter Internet connections.
ISPs will be required to block access to any Internet address the authorities consider necessary to prevent distribution of child pornography.
Critics of the bill, while opposing the distribution of child pornography, say filtering is the wrong way to go about it....
Overall the comments that a cup tits are banned is basically correct. The size of a females breasts leads directly, in alot of cases - especially those where the female is posing nude - to speculation as to the persons age.
THE minister in charge of the Government's web censorship plan has been caught out censoring his own website.
The front page of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's official website displays a list of topics connected to his portfolio, along with links to more information about each one.
All the usual topics are there – cyber safety, the national broadband network, broadcasters ABC and SBS, digital television and so on.
All except one.
It was revealed today a script within the minister's homepage deliberately removes references to internet filtering from the list.
In the function that creates the list, or "tag cloud", there is a condition that if the words "ISP filtering" appear they should be skipped and not displayed.
The discovery is unlikely to do any favours for Senator Conroy's web filtering policy, which has been criticised for its secrecy.
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
related coverage
Broadband: 'Speeds are too slow'
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
According to Google's cache records, the exception has been included on the minister's homepage since at least February 14.
A message on the page says it was last updated in October last year.
Melbourne web developer David Johnson told news.com.au the code was intended to remove references to internet filtering.
"The code is a quick fix," said Mr Johnson of creative agency Lemonade.
"If the developers of the minister’s site had wanted to do it properly they would have placed the 'ISP filtering' keyword exclusion on the server side where it is inaccessible to the public, instead of the front-end code which can be seen by anyone and understood by people with even a basic knowledge of scripting."
The function, written in web scripting language Javascript, appears to have been first discovered by a user on the Whirlpool broadband discussion forum.
Senator Conroy's office has been contacted for comment
Stephen Conroy; The Man Who Killed The Internet.
